


With But A Single Thought

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: and malt does more than Milton can (to justify God's ways to man) [2]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 18:12:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3178241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Leek’s bunker, Jenny and Morg have a thing or two to think about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With But A Single Thought

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks as ever to tli, who originally wrote daemons in Primeval and thought up Claudia’s Lerengorm and Cutter’s Ianea. 
> 
> Claudia - Leregorm:swan  
> Cutter - Ianea:Scottish wildcat  
> Stephen - ?:unknown bird of prey  
> Jenny - Morgelern:river kingfisher  
> Connor - Asdis:Labrador   
> Abby - Nazariy: komodo dragon  
> Lorraine - Heseskiel:European Eagle Owl.

            Jenny remembered the way Nick Cutter had stared at her daemon. He’d refused to believe she wasn’t this – Claudia Brown, and then he’d clearly realised that there was something missing, and then he’d focussed on something perched on the computer screen next to her and stared, jaw dropped, blue eyes almost popping, his equally distressed tabby-type daemon hissing in confusion.

 

            “But – but – but –”

 

            “Beg your pardon,” Jenny’s daemon Morgelern had snapped, fluffing up his feathers and seriously considering dive-bombing the tabby. “It’s rude to stare.”

 

            “Why aren’t you a _swan_?” Nick Cutter had burst out, evidently a man at the end of his tether, and Jenny had pretty much concluded that he was mad.

 

            After all, confusing a kingfisher with a swan took some doing.

 

           

            Since then, Jenny and Morg had had to rethink a few things. Never more so than when they were sitting on a convenient step outside Leek’s bunker – Jenny should have known: _never trust a man with a snake for a daemon_ , Mummy and Amabela had always warned them, and Morg had had a few choice words to say on the subject of Oliver Leek’s slimy little krait – coming to terms with the fact that Claudia Brown had existed. And she had had a daemon. Who was a swan. A swan called Lerengorm, which, if you worked it out on a piece of paper – and Jenny had, by the simple expedient of retrieving her handbag from the jeep they’d driven to Leek’s bunker and scribbling in her notebook – was an anagram of Morgelern.

 

            Jenny shivered, and drew her shock blanket around her shoulders.

 

            “Oi, watch it,” Morg said, bouncing off her shoulder and fluttering briefly in the air. “Not all of us are Heseskiel, you know, stay on even if an elephant charged him.”

 

            “Count yourself lucky you’re _not_ Heseskiel,” Jenny retorted, having learnt over the past thirty-two years that the only way to deal with Morg was to give as good as you got. “Heseskiel can’t stay on Lorraine’s shoulder for more than a minute at a time – he’d take out her artery. He wrecks anything smaller than a banister if he isn’t careful.”

 

            Morg shuddered, and Jenny recalled him fluttering against her neck as the dinofelis hunted them, Asdis whining softly and Connor calling out in stifled desperation as Abby and Nazariy stepped away from the group, daemon and woman moving low, slinking with the easy surety of predators across the concrete floor.

 

            _Come on_ , Abby had murmured. _I know this animal. I know how it thinks. It’s trying to decide if we’re dangerous... trying to work out if we’re a threat. Well, we are. Come take us on. Come take us on, me and Naz..._

 

            And Morg had fluttered against her neck, then hopped up to perch on her hair, hunkered down and prodded her scalp with his beak, full of nervous energy. _Why can’t you fly, you silly bint? Why can’t you fly?_

 

            “Don’t even joke, Jenny,” Morg said, softer than she’d heard him for a long time. “Don’t even joke.”

 

            Silently, she set aside the sweet tea she’d been given for the shock, and cupped her hands in her lap. Morg bounced down into them, and she stroked his colourful feathers down the right way, felt his tiny flickering pulse under her fingertips. “We’re safe, you and I,” she said quietly. “We’re safe.”

 

            “I know,” Morg said, and pecked her, largely because he could.

 

            “Ow! Bloody bird!”

 

            “Cease your whining, woman,” Morg said, standing on some nonexistent moral high ground by the simple expedient of sticking his beak in the air. “That didn’t even hurt.”

 

            “Watch it, Tweety-pie,” Jenny threatened, and heard amusement in her own voice, against her own will.

 

            “Huh,” Morg harrumphed, hunkering down again until he was little more than a ball of brightly-coloured down and a pointy beak in Jenny’s hands.

 

            Jenny let her eyes and her mind wander over Connor, belatedly explaining himself to Lester – Esteri, austere as ever, was busy staring down Connor’s Labrador, who could abase herself all she liked, but who was not going to be getting any approval from the sleek grey cat any time soon – Abby and Nazariy, firmly parked in the one and only patch of sun to be found and curled into a sloppy knot of human and komodo dragon, and Cutter and Ianea, sedated.

 

            Jenny knew if she went over there that Cutter would be crying in his sleep, and that Ianea’s paws would be lashing out, even though she was unconscious.

 

            Stephen’s body lay separately on a stretcher, covered by a red blanket, so that you couldn’t see that there was no daemon there, so that the absence of his bird of prey wasn’t noticeable. Jenny felt a pang as she realised she’d never known the bird’s name, or even her species. Morg had pestered and cajoled, but the bird had never even uttered a word to him, as if she was determined to isolate herself as thoroughly as her human. Stephen’s soul had been silent. If you asked Jenny, she matched the seclusion Stephen had imposed on himself, out of guilt and pain.

 

            “Why am I not a swan?” Morg said abruptly, probably because she had just started to cry, and Morg hated the rain.

 

            “I don’t know,” Jenny said, making a determined effort to control herself for the sake of her mascara. “You settled.”

 

            “We thought about it,” Morg said. “I remember we thought about it. It came down to kingfisher or swan.”

 

            “And we chose kingfisher,” Jenny contributed, closing her eyes and taking calm, steady breaths, as her yoga instructor had taught her. (It was difficult to take calm, steady breaths when Morg was attempting to contort himself, as the instructor’s sloth could and Morg could not, so Jenny was used to working against the odds. It was just that now she was trying not to cry rather than laugh.)

 

            “For the bright colours,” Morg said absently. “Maybe we should’ve gone for swan. I could have had that wretched monkey’s fingers off quicker than blinking. We could have fixed Helen Cutter good and proper.”

 

            “No,” Jenny said, and her fingers drifted to the rifle beside her, the rifle she had carefully unloaded. She wasn’t fifteen any more, taking pot-shots at clay pigeons while Morg heckled from the sidelines, but she was still good. Too good. “We’re just right as we are. I like you small and pointy and nippy. How would we ever survive the Tube if you couldn’t fly above people’s heads and yell at them for being in my way?”

 

            Morg hesitated for a moment, then nodded sharply, decisively. “Tell you what, Jen.”

 

            “You’re always telling me things. Think of something new.”

 

            Morg pecked her again, and flew up to perch on her hair when she swatted at him. “Let’s never change.”


End file.
